JFK:
I am told... That was the day we moved into the house I grew up in. I was 11 months old and in a playpen in the living room.

Challenger:
This one is interesting. I have a vivid memory of standing in the doorway to the dorm floor lounge. I was watch the blastoff on the TV, keeping an eye on my watch. I was going to have to make a run for my Business Law class as is. After seeing the contrails split, I knew there was something wrong. The announcers did not know what to do. They were stumbling for word. You knew that they knew something bad, VERY bad, has just happened, but they couldn't say anything. I ran off to class wondering what I should do. Should I let the Prof know so that he can make an announcement? I opted not to.

Now for the interesting part. I graduated college in August of '85.

Columbia:
My FIL & I were replacing the siding on the house that day. I had stepped inside for something and grabbed a quick look at the TV. It had happened about a half hour earlier.

9/11
I was attending a training class. Sitting in a conference room waiting for the class to start. We heard this loud "boom". We all looked at each other and asked "What was that?" A few second later, we saw burning debris falling past the window.
25th floor
South Tower.

All the way across the country, 9/11 had impact, though it didn't hit home the same as if it were in our city or state. I know I've probably posted it before, and it's not super exciting, but here.

I was a freshman in high school, still taking the bus, so I had to be up at about 6 AM. We're three hours behind NYC time. I turned the radio on as usual, while getting ready in the bathroom. It was set as normal to an AM station that had news at the top of the hour, and a light talk show after that. I knew something was up because instead of either of those, it was a very shaken woman's voice talking about an accident, a plane hitting a skyscraper in NYC. I was unfamiliar with the Twin Towers at that time. The second plane hit at some point, but it was confused and I don't remember. I walked out into the living room and my mom had come down stairs and turned on the tv. I know it doesn't sound like much, but we never ever turned the tv on in the morning. We were always in a hurry, we didn't even turn on all the lights in the house, much less watch tv. Anyway, at that moment I remember knowing whatever was happening was really bad. Mom and I didn't say anything to each other, that I remember, we just watched and then I had to go.

I walk to the bus, and on the bus, instead of smooth jazz on the radio, again it's the news. At school we listened to the radio during first period, then watched tv news for the rest of the classes. After a few hours of watching the endless replays, I pretty much tuned it out. When I got home from school I realized it was so very quiet because all planes in the US had been grounded. We lived in the flight path of a small airport and constantly had planes and helicopters, so the silence was extremely eerie. Then the next day a classmate came in very shaken saying his dad, a commercial pilot, had been in the air during the attacks and afterward was escorted by fighter jets. He'd been told if he deviated from the course in any way, they'd shoot the plane down. In the weeks and months afterward, there were flags everywhere and a lot of patriotism, and some very unfortunate hate crimes.

My mom remembers JFK's assassination, she said a teacher came in to the classroom crying to tell her teacher the news. She remembers MLK's assassination, though mostly because they got sent home early from school out of fear of riots.

I hope I don't have any other memories like 9/11. I was old enough to be impacted, but still young enough that I didn't completely feel it. Now I'd feel it worse I think.

I remember John Lennon's killing. Then the attempted assassination of Reagan. There was a joke that went around my HS that the latter was Chapman trying to say he was sorry...

I watched the Miracle on Ice on live TV as it happened, at home in the living room.

For the Challenger disaster I was walking to lunch in the college cafeteria. When I walked past the TV room, a ton of people were gathered there, watching replays of the incident.

I woke up on 9/11 to my clock-radio, as usual, and the DJs were talking about some accident in NY. I know that there had been a B25 that hit the Empire State back in the 40s, so I figured it was another accident like that. I went out to the living room and turned on the TV morning news as usual, and watched the second plane hit. I knew I wouldn't be going to work that day. Sure enough, I got a call from my grand-boss telling me to stay home; nobody was going to be allowed onto Moffett Field (where NASA-Ames was located). Some early-arriving coworkers had been kicked out, in fact.

For the Columbia wreck, I was down at my uncle's house in LA. I watched the replays on the news, and pretty much knew what had happened the moment I saw it.

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“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers

Happy thought. I remember my dad waking me up one summer night when I was five. He wanted me to see something special on the TV. The ghostly, surreal image of a man descending a ladder to set his foot ON THE FRICKIN MOON. I only vaguely understood what that meant then. I am awestruck by that memory today, and the achievement it represents.

Not so happy thought. I'm continually infuriated by the fact that there are people who insist that it was a hoax. Even more infuriated by the current crop of politicians who think mysticism trumps science.

Last edited by CyberLurch; 02-09-2019 at 12:02 AM.
Reason: added a couple of thoughts.

Not so happy thought. I'm continually infuriated by the fact that there are people who insist that it was a hoax. Even more infuriated by the current crop of politicians who think mysticism trumps science.

Me too. I worked at Cape Kennedy during the first moon landing.

We have a friend who told my wife she though the moon landing was fake. Mrs. IA told her to never mention that to me since I was part of the moon landing program. The friend has never mentioned it to me.

This friend is also a spiritualist minister.

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My dad remembers watching the moon landing as a kid. His school sent everyone home early because they only had one tv. He went to a friend's house because it was closer and he wouldn't have made it all the way home in time.

Mum doesn't remember watching it, but she does remember seeing the photos in the newspaper the next day. (Small not-wealthy country town that might have had 1 TV for every 10 houses.)

The best thing we ever did on any of our family holidays was stopping at the Parkes Observatory in New South Wales and seeing the massive dishes and the equipment that was used to bring the signal back and send it all around the world. It was so cool to see all the old footage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory

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Challenger disaster:
We were stationed in Germany at the time. We had brought our car to a local car repair shop to get a pressure test done on the engine to determine where the oil leak was coming from. We went after work to pick it up. The mechanic that has performed the test had already gone home. So the guy at the service counter called him at home to find out the results. We only heard one side of the conversation:
"The clients with the car you pressure tested are here and want to know the results."
"Oh yeah, yeah, that was today"
"Oh wow, it exploded!"
Cue me freaking out while he made a bit more small talk and did a few hmmm's and haww's, before he got of the phone and told me the mechanic had been watching the Challenger launch.

9/11/01
I was just starting on a service call to install locks in a new commercial building. There were a crew of masons still working on the facade of the building next to me. They had their truck pulled up and the doors open and were listening to the radio. When the announcer interrupted with breaking news.
It was about the first plane that hit the north tower. At that point speculation ran wild but it was thought to be an accident. Until the other plane hit the south tower.

Then they announced the hit on the pentagon. At that point it was clear it was a terrorist attack. They had announced the grounding of all planes. In the meantime I had moved a bit further down the building and couldn't hear the mason's radio as loud. What I did hear was a plane in the sky, so I looked up. The plane was heading west from PA into OH, then the pitch of the engines changed and it made a almost 180 course reversion, heading back east into PA.

It was not until days later, when they were replaying the timeline of events on TV, that I realized that it was flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, PA

2037... incredibly hot summer. You hardly think about it being a big deal now but it was huge headlines then.All out in the garden in our new little Pennsylvania Atlantic beach house with the kids having big summer party with the huge VRTV screen up for the live commentary on the very first successful time travel passenger flights...

😒

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I was off work that day, but was scheduled to have classes at NVCC that afternoon/evening. I woke up late in the morning, came downstairs, and Mom looked up from the TV to tell me, "We may be going to war."

Spent the rest of the day variously either watching the news and just trying to wrap my head around what had happened. Classes were cancelled, naturally, and my sister came home early from high school.

Some of her schoolmates were outside for gym class when the plane hit the Pentagon. They could hear the crash.

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